Thulium

I hope in my absence this week, many of you have explored the new "Periodic Table" tab! There are a few interactive tables, a traditional table, and a song about the elements, so I encourage you all to check it out! (Thanks to Nick for giving me the inspiration and to Katherine for a fabulous periodic table!)

So in my busy week of being in the high school and university classes, it dawned on me in my hands-on-Physics-lab-teaching-class (I have no other way to describe this class) how much I truly missed rigorous science. I add in 'rigorous' because I have been bored half to death with the pace of my ninth grade class, where we haven't made it out of the scientific method yet. Understandably, high school - especially ninth grade - does not move at the lightning pace of college classes, but when students are given three worksheets about the scientific method and not a single question is related to actual science examples, it is mildly disheartening (if you're wondering, the worksheets are on Spongebob, The Simpsons, and Jersey Shore).

I miss digging into the sciences and really thinking about why things happen. No joke - my physics instructor at U of M ended the class by squirting out a mountain of shaving cream onto the desk and asking, "Is this a solid, liquid, or gas?" Seems simple in practice that you would choose one of the physical states, but being in a room of science nerds, we started to question the necessity of gas when squirting it out, if the cream was liquid in the can, etc. It turns out the answer is not so simple (d. none of the above). What we learn about states in elementary, middle, and high school is that they are static and have clear cut lines that define them. In real life, not so much. So in short, shaving cream is somewhere in between our ideas of solids, liquids, and gases.

Why do I expound so much time on this? In my need for science, I have been devouring the Science Times whenever humanly possible. I have even been going back into the archives to read stories that I may have missed because I need something scientifically stimulating right now. And in the archives, I found this gem of an article from August (clearly I didn't have to go back too far) talking about the isolation of scientists from politics and general society. A group of scientists who have had former political careers have formed a campaign called Ben Franklin's List (fitting name right - scientist and founding father) that encourages more scientists to run for political office. Think about this for a second - we are currently making decisions about science and math education, technology, ground-breaking research (i.e. stem cells), NASA, etc. and a mere 22 of 435 people in the House of Representatives have any science background. That's a bit scary, right? The saddest part about the article is that Ben Franklin's List suffered a setback when one of its founders decided to run again for office. Being that he wanted to create a nonpartisan organization, he had to pull himself out from being a part of what he had started. You don't see that very often in other political organizations...

Anyway, I encourage you all to read the article - it is pretty enlightening. And along with the article is a "Name that Scientist" quiz with current, living scientists. See how you do and I'll let you know how I faired.

Trivia Answer: Other cities that have elements are Berkeley, CA (berkelium), Dubna, Russian (dubnium), and Darmstadt, Germany (darmstadtium). Unlike the elements from Ytterby, Sweden, the aforementioned elements are all short-lived radioactive elements developed in a laboratory setting.

Fun Fact: John Emsley, a British writer about chemistry, cited thulium as "the least significant element there is." His statement comes from the fact that thulium has few applications in our society, is extremely rare, and is difficult to purify. To exemplify this, in 1911, it took scientist Charles James 15,000 recrystallizations to purify thulium.